We Are Asking the Wrong Question About Joe Biden on this Fourth of July

Jul 04, 2024

To paraphrase an old Richard Pryor joke, “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own lying eyes?”

Since the presidential debate last week, the leaders of the Democratic Party, in full 5-alarm fire mode, want us to believe we didn’t see what we saw.

“It was just a cold.”

“Everybody has an off night.”

“Ok, so it wasn’t his best performance.”

“All presidents have one bad debate.”

“You’re not going to judge 52 years of public service by 90 minutes of a lousy debate, are you?”

“He’s 81! What do you expect? You’ll be 81 someday!”

“He’s not a quitter. He’s all in. This is Scranton Joe we’re talkin’ about!”

“Yeah. Sure. The debate was a disaster. So what?”

These answers are all malarkey. That’s probably because we are asking the wrong question when we ask “What are we going to do about Joe?”

Maybe we should be asking what are we going to do about ourselves — and what can we do to get him some help?

Perhaps we should start with a definition of terms. Why do people keep calling it a “debate?” Isn’t that kind of like saying Israel is at “war” with Hamas? After all, if it’s a “war,” don’t there have to be things like armies, tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, and the threat of nuclear annihilation on both sides? If only one side has these things, and the other side has none of them, is it really a war?

Was it really a debate if one of the debaters is so mentally and physically incapacitated that he cannot complete a sentence, randomly flips between discussing abortion, the three trimesters of a pregnancy and how great his golf game is, then looking around, unable to find one of the four cameras pointing at him, he suddenly turns his head all the way to the left as if he were looking for Rhode Island, and then out of nowhere raises his voice and shouts, “WE FINALLY BEAT MEDICARE!” Not Ohio State, but Medicare.

We saw and we heard all of that, no matter what the Party hacks keep telling us. It was heartbreaking. It was truly, without equivocation, unlike anything any of us had ever seen. No matter where you stood on the Joe Biden scale, from Joe the Working Class Hero to Joe the Banker of Palestinian Ethnic Cleansing, one thing was certain: This was not a cold. This was a human being in utter collapse. Not just political collapse, or performance collapse, but rather a full frontal lobe meltdown where at any moment you had to wonder… was it possible that the sweet and fragile existence we call “life” was about to short-circuit, or worse, lose power (to Trump)? And that no amount of shouting “STAT!” or cutting quickly to a commercial break was going to restore the President-cum-Patient to full capacity in order to save this even more fragile Democracy.

Do not mistake my criticisms of Biden spending 9 months in the loving embrace of Bibi Netanyahu as meaning that I do not deeply appreciate his 3 years of being the most progressive President of my lifetime. That’s right, my friends, there has been more action taken, through executive orders and legislation, to protect the environment, more government officials appointed who are, in their heart of hearts, Democratic Socialists, more serious funding to lift millions out of poverty, more support for labor unions, libraries, single mothers and college students deep in debt. And he has had this fervent, almost religious zeal to fight greed and obscene profits due to a true compassion he has for those dealt a bad hand in life — and he has had more of all of that than all the good presidents like Kennedy, Obama, and Carter were able to muster.

He will have another mini stroke in the next few months (he’s probably had one or two already) and then, sadly, the decline will not be reversed. Best to make a plan now and not wait until October. This is not about whether he’s fit to serve another four years — this is about whether he should serve another four days in the toughest job in the world. That’s the question we should be asking. If he offered to drive you from Flint to Detroit tonight, would you get in the car?

I’m not a doctor. I could be (and hopefully am) wrong about all this. But I do have eyes. They don’t lie. I, like nearly every one of you, had (or currently have) four grandparents and two parents (some of you have even more, with wonderful step-parents and step-grandparents). And if you yourself are over the age of 40, your eyes have seen it, too. The slow decline of your elders, followed by a sudden incident or event and then, without warning, your loved one is confused, not sure where he or she is at, can’t find the keys, can’t find the rest of the thought she just had, or the ability to even end the sentence he was in the middle of. It’s all quite normal and to be expected — and it will visit all of us one day. It won’t feel good. It won’t look pretty. But more than likely, that feeble, humbling moment will not be televised LIVE to an audience of 2 billion people around the world, with Jake Tapper’s hot breath breathing down your neck and telling you, ironically, that your time is up. Who exactly is Jake Tapper, you might ask yourself at 81. It won’t matter. Because at that point, when you suddenly blurt out that there are “1,000 trillionaires in America!” and you’ve spent your presidency trying to make them just pay their friggin’ taxes but now you realize these rich-ass barbarians are at your gate — well, then, nothing will really matter.

I’m sorry, my friends, but if I have to be the only one to stand for Joe Biden, to protect him from the cruelest form of elder abuse I’ve ever been forced to watch, well then that’s what I’ll do. He was in epic distress that Thursday night. Every cognitive default in his mind was shutting down. If this had been someone you truly cared about, loved, embraced — what would you have done? Would you have seriously even let him go out on that stage? Who would send an 81-year-old out onto any stage to debate a living monster at 9 o’clock at night for a brawl that would not end until 10:42 PM? Honestly, have any one of you ever looked at the clock, saw that it was getting near 11 PM, and said to yourself, “I think I’m going to give Grams and Gramps a call!” You never did that because it would be cruel. The only people who would think of forcing an elder to perform at that hour of the night would be the same people who would insist on 6 straight days of non-stop “debate prep” — hours and hours each day of standing and talking until you were hoarse and exhausted. Trump was right when he turned to Biden to ask him what his problem was as to why he never fires anybody. It’s amazing to me that how, a week later, anyone on this campaign staff still has a job after running this tired and grieving father into the ground. A man who had just watched his only remaining son convicted as a felon for the outrageous crime of needing help, for being an addict. Who would put this old man through a brutal boot camp, make him memorize 200 facts and stats and then pick the wrong podium without once going on the stage the day before to check the lighting, the sight lines, and where the bully would be standing, lying, a smug TV star who knew what the red light on the camera meant, who knew timing and how to wait and when to pounce and devour his prey — all while speaking in his softest, most fake-empathic voice, his most honest statement of the night: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence — and I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Biden was not well. Biden did not possess the faculties he needed. Something was wrong. Did nobody see this in the days leading up to the collapse? Did not a single person raise their voice to ask, “Maybe we shouldn’t do this to him?”

But they did do it to him. And the repercussions that we, the world, and the generations after us will have to suffer through are not even part of the discussion this week. It’s all about making sure he stays in the race — and nothing about the risk to his life he is facing as they push him to soldier onward.

So I will say this to protect him from an out-of-control Party machine that is in a panic over what to do. For any of us to be silent now is exactly what the term “elder abuse” is meant to describe.

Leave Mr. Biden alone. Let him rest. Let him go home.

He has done his job. Let him have his dignity. Do him this favor.

Tell the press that President Biden has asked to have an independent team of doctors do a full medical evaluation of his mental and physical health.

When they are through, they, along with the President, will then announce the full results to the public and give their honest assessment: “For the good of his well-being, he must stop work, he must step down.”

The next day, President Biden will give his final remarks in a short and beautiful statement on the South Lawn of the White House. The place will be packed with thousands of grateful, everyday Americans — fry cooks and teachers, bricklayers and nurses, gay teens and vets, the homeless, the union members and the elder-care workers — all of whom know what he is doing is for the good of the country he loves so dearly. He once saved the world from a man named Trump, and now, in one last selfless act, he is stepping aside to ensure this Trump will be banished for good. Millions, upon hearing him speak while he wipes the tears from his eyes, will weep, too. Biden will never be forgotten. A profile in courage.

The Founders of this country were smart in many ways. They knew there would be presidents who would not make it through even a four-year term. So they set up a position called “Vice President” just for that reason. It’s amazing to think that we’ve had only 46 presidents and that 9 of them (20%) never made it to the end of their term. Four were assassinated. One resigned. Four more died of various illnesses. Each time there was a smooth and peaceful transition with the Vice President being sworn in as the new President.

This is not an unusual moment we are in this week. It happens. There’s precedent. And if President Biden is unable to perform his duties, there is a tried and true solution. He resigns due to the obvious medical issues that were on full display the night of June 27th. His vice president, Kamala Harris, is sworn in as President. By federal campaign rules, she, and only she, inherits all the campaign funds in the Biden-Harris war chest. Biden will urge all his Biden-Harris convention delegates to support her. She will now be the Incumbent President who will run on the incredible accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration. There will be no real convention fight, and nearly every American who had planned to vote for Biden will vote for Harris (as recent polling has revealed). Many have already stated that they’d vote for a dead cat or a ficus plant instead of Trump. Some have even said that they would go all-out-Weekend-at-Bernie’s and vote for a “dead” Biden if that meant keeping Trump out of the White House.

One possible bonus in all of this will be that a record number of votes from women for Harris will make up for some of Biden’s loss of the youth and Arab vote. And there’s this: For over 8 months, it has been reported that Kamala Harris has pushed for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. One thing seems possible from this mess we’re in — less Palestinians will die with her in the Oval Office.

And this: Some day we will look back and see that we grew and got better as a country and finally finished the job of having a full, equal and complete Democracy. Our first female President, it turns out, ended up playing a big role in making that happen. Another gift from Joe Biden, picking her, knowing she was the right one when, during their own debate on a stage in 2020, she gently but caustically reminded him that as a Senator in D.C., he once stood in the way of her going to an integrated school in Berkeley, CA.

You could see, in that moment, the sadness and shame on his face. He knew right from wrong. And in 2020, he knew, even if most of his supporters weren’t sure about her as his VP, and even if her platform was essentially Bernie’s, that she was the one — and the first of many women and people of color who would lead us to our better selves.

I’m ok with that, aren’t you? Let’s find the courage to fix this. On our 248th birthday.

Now that’s old.

Photos by: Jim Watson and Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Michael Moore

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